The present invention relates to a hanger for hanging a kitchen appliance such as an electronic oven on a cabinet or the like at various installation sites and in small spaces.
There are known many types of kitchen cabinets on which kitchen appliances can be hung. The shapes of the bottom panels of available kitchen cabinets, where kitchen appliances are to be mounted, are of different types. One type is a flush bottom type as shown in FIG. 7 of the accompanying drawings, and another is a front rail bottom type as shown in FIG. 1 of the accompanying drawing. The flush-bottom-type cabinet has a flush bottom with no front rail or panel projecting downwardly beyond the cabinet bottom panel. The front rail bottom type cabinet has a front rail or panel projecting downwardly beyond the cabinet bottom panel. Therefore, hangers for kitchen appliances should accommodate such different cabinet designs as to shape and thickness of the bottom panel, height of the front rail etc.
FIG. 1 of the accompanying drawings shows a conventional hanger for a kitchen appliance 2 such as an electronic oven 2. A metal plate 24 is placed on the bottom panel 3 of a cabinet 1, and screws 25 are inserted downwardly through the metal plate 24 and the bottom panel 3, and threaded through respective resilient spacers 26 into an elongate bracket 27, each of the spacers 26 comprising one or more stacked pads. The electronic oven 2 has a reinforced upper panel (not shown in FIG. 1) from which mushroom-shaped hooks 28 extend upwardly. For hanging the electronic oven 2 from the cabinet bottom panel 3, the hooks 28 are inserted and shifted laterally in holes 29 defined in the bracket 27 to suspend the electronic oven 2 from the bracket 27, and then the screws 25 are tightened to anchor the bracket 27 securely to the cabinet 1.
When the electronic oven 2 is to be attached directly to the bottom panel 3 of the cabinet 1, the bracket 27, the spacer pads 26, and the mushroom-shaped hooks 28 are dispensed with, as shown in FIG. 2. The electronic oven 2 includes an inner reinforcing attachment panel 30 having threaded holes 31 into which screws 32 are threaded through the bottom panel 3 and the metal plate 24 to couple the electronic oven 2 directly to the cabinet 1.
The hanger shown in FIG. 1 is adjustable as follows: Depending on the height of front panel 17 of the cabinet 1, the length of the screws 25 and the number of the spacer pads are varied to adjust the vertical distance between the cabinet bottom panel 3 and the bracket 27. Therefore, many screws 25 of different lengths and many spacer pads have to be kept ready for use. The electronic oven 2 as it is installed is relatively unstable since the bracket 27 is secured to the bottom panel 3 by the screws 25 through the resilient pads 26. Another problem is that the hooks 28 are likely to disengage from the bracket 27 because the hooks 28 are retained on the bracket 27 only through frictional engagement therewith. Furthermore, the upper panel, denoted 18 in FIG. 2, of the electronic oven 2 has to be reinforced inasmuch as the hooks 28 are subject to concentrated stress when the electronic oven 2 is suspended from the bracket 27. When the electronic oven 2 is used directly on a countertop, with the illustrated hanger as an optional component, the reinforcement of the upper panel 18 is a wasteful cost increase.
For attaching the electronic oven 2 directly to the bottom panel 3 of the cabinet 1 as shown in FIG. 2, it is necessary to register the threaded holes 31 of the inner reinforcing attachment panel 30 with the holes of the metal plate 24 and the bottom panel 3 in the attachment procedure. However, such a registering process is not easy to carry out since the upper panel 18 and the bottom panel 3 do not have any projections or recesses serving as registering aids. The electronic oven 2 utilizes high-voltage electric energy for its operation, and the threaded insertion of the screws 32 into the electronic oven 2 is not preferred since screws 32 may deeply enter the electronic oven 2 dependent on the thickness of the bottom panel 3 and the length of the screws 32.